Capria was a young child when Bhall fell. She was not a priestess or a commoner but a member of one of Braduk's most noble families. (She was not herself a NuValle, but could have been a second or third cousin of the king and is likely the closest tie that the modern Bannor have to the royal line of their predecessors.) I believe she spent most of her early life in the courts of King Khorde NuValle, but was in the temple of Bhall during the fall.
I memory serves, shortly before the fall of Bhall Donal Lugh was severely wounded in battle and fell into a coma so deep that he was assumed to be dead. As he had been a national hero, he was given a state funeral in the temple of Bhall. I believe Capria and her family were in the temple at the time to pay him their respects. When Bhall fell, Donal startled the attendees half to death by waking up and grabbing the funeral bier on which he had been placed to use it as a shield defending them against the attacks of the mad priests. I believe that he led them to a shrine of Junil and offered the prayers that resulted in Sabathiel appearing to lead them through the dangers of hell.
When in hell the Bannor did not have physical bodies. Their spiritual bodies originally matched the physical forms they had in life, but they aged very differently. In hell, time is irrelevant to aging and one's psychological state is very important. Capria quickly grew from a fragile prepubescent girl into a strong young woman through exercising strict discipline. (The fact that she had to act as the only mother figure for her little sister Sabra also required that she mature quickly.) She did not allow any of the moral failings that led so many of her fellow sojourners to decay into the frailty of old age and fall prey to the demons that constantly pursued them. Most of those who survived the fall into hell did not survive their stay there, but those that did remained young and strong for centuries. When they returned to Erebus they regained physical bodies that where like their spiritual forms in hell, which for most of them meant youthful and at the peak of physical fitness.
(I do not think it is possible to have children in hell. I know that it is impossible to have children in Arawn's Netherworld, and strongly suspect that is also the case for most if not all of the gods' vaults. Amathaon's seems like the most likely exception, as conception and childbirth are very much parts of the creation sphere. Actually, now that I think of it, Esus's hell is inhabited almost entirely by living beings and is made to be nearly indistinguishable from Erebus, so childbirth might be possible there too.)
The Old Bannor Empire is one of the Nine Human Nations that arose from factions in the Patrian Civil War. This was still in the Age of Magic, but after Kylorin had repented of his evil ways and turned against his apprentices. The others were the Elohim, the Malakim, the Lanun, the Hippus, the Grigori, the Balseraphs, the Illians, and the Calabim. At one point the Kuriotates were counted among them, but I convinced Kael that it would better fit the meaning of the Creation sphere for the Kuriotates to be the youngest of all the nations of Erebus. I also tried to convince him that it would be better for most of the factions to be peoples that did not exist yet and to have most nations not form until much more recently, but he didn't want to have to come up with new lore for a bunch of extinct civilizations. Still, it is probably important to remember that these factions are not identical to their modern counterparts. The modern Calabim are explicitly described as being descended from scattered tribes of humans that used the superior hunting skills of the vampires Alexis and Flauros to survive the Age of Ice, not realizing that they would slowly be transformed into mere cattle. The most ancient vampires may have started several civilizations over the course of history and then exterminated them all when it seemed that their secrets were about to be exposed. The Elohim actually date back to the Age of Dragons and although they were assimilated into Patria managed to outlive it. As they focused on preserving holy sites, their kingdom was probably non-contiguous pockets spread across Erebus. The Hippus and Lanun civilizations were also older than Patria, and were arguably never really part of it. Their leaders were forced to swear fealty to Kylorin, but Patria could not exert much control over them beyond collecting the occasional tribute. For the most part the Lanun served a buffer between the human empire and the Aifons, and the Hippus as a buffer against the Dwarves. Cassiel was a greatly respected philosopher in Patria, and may have taken with him a good chunk of the core empire. The Malakim where those who wandered or were driven into distant deserts and were probably considered unimportant. The Illians were much the same, but with frozen wastelands. It is not clear whether Perpentach was imprisoned before or after ruling the Balseraphs of the Age of Magic. Nikis-Knight prefers to think that he escaped from the Tower of Eyes relatively quickly and founded his modern nation before the Age of Ice. I prefer to think that the modern nation is fairly young, and historians just happen to use the name name for the very different realm that he ruled before Kylorin broke down the mental barriers that were keeping his multiple personalities at bay. If it is as I prefer, then the Balseraphs of that age were the direct descendents of Patria. It would be an arcane empire ruled by Kylorin's most powerful pupil and adopted son, the heir apparent Perpentach the Caswallawn whose power denied his subjects even the ability to think disloyal thoughts. The Bannor were one of the last Patrian factions to emerge, but they proved to be the most successful in fighting against evil sorcerers. (The fact that there still were powerful evil sorcerers among their enemies seems to fit well with my theory of the Balseraphs, and the fact that Bal-Seraphs should literally mean the evil equivalent of Bhall's great angels of fire may indicate that the name emerged to emphasize their antagonism to the Bannor.) At the time the holy flames of Bhall were harmless to the innocent and lethal to the wicked, making it the perfect judge, jury, and executioner. The Banner crusade wielded it and washed over Erebus like a wildfire, exterminating their arcane foes. By the time of Bhall's fall they had very nearly crushed their enemies and seemed to be well on their way to reuniting humanity under a single rule.
It is hard to say where the Patrian capital was, but Kael has said that it is not in Amurite lands. The Amurites see themselves as the heirs of the Patrians because they were led by Kylorin, but their claim to this heritage is not really any stronger than that of the other human nations. The Amurites were just another bastard tribe formed from refugees from the different nations that fell when Mulcarn rose. Kylorin only joined them because his wife happened to be reborn among them during the generation when Nentosuelta convinced him to take up his greatest quest. She had already collected 6 of the 7 pieces of the body of her beloved Sucellus, but needed help retrieving his heart. As the heart of Sucellus was buried within Mulcarn's palace in what would later become Letum Frigus, retrieving it required reforging the Godslayer and vanquishing the God of Winter.
(This is a huge stretch, but I personally prefer to believe that once Kylorin's quest was done he chose to abandon the Amurites in order to live among the Illians he just defeated. I like to think that he discovered Epona reincarnated as an Illian girl by the name of Harna living in a small village known as Brigdarrow. He proceeded to live out his greatest fantasy, an ordinary life with the woman he loves on a simple farm outside of town. After years that required polygamy, he would long for the Illian custom of monogamous marriage that can never be ended, even by death. Even if he had not longed for anonymity, the animosity that the Illians would surely harbor towards his person would require that he use a pseudonym and hide his magic even from his own family. The pseudonym he chose was Joshua Ulvin, and the son he refused to train in matters arcane was Auric, future God of Winter. As the only child of Kylorin and Eve/Epona/Harna not trained in the proper use of magic from infancy, Auric had tremendous magical talent but not the teaching he would need to be able to resist being dominated by the spell sphere that longed for a new master. Kylorin would blame himself for failing his son, especially when he realized the harm he caused by leaving to search for his wife's next incarnation before checking to see if his son survived the massacre by Gosea's goblin mercenaries. It is with deep regret that he informs a player in the game of the Godslayer's location, as he knows that the world cannot survive if Auric Ascended is not stopped yet he cannot bring himself to personally murder his own son.)
Originally, Kael claimed that the Patrians called themselves Amurites and that the modern Amurites took up their name to honor their predecessors. However, he later changed his mind about this, thinking it would be too confusing for those new to the mod. I personally like to think that Amur is the name of the city-state that Kylorin inherited and ruled prior to uniting humanity into one nation, and the ancient Amurites were his people before there were any Patrians. He may have later built a new capital better suited for the administration of his vast domain, and chosen to call his kingdom simply "the Fatherland" in order to reduce regional strife. After repenting of his evil ways Kylorin likely found the idea of recreating Patria to be extremely distasteful, and may have chosen to call his new tribe the Amurites to honor the simpler times when he was still a good man rather than a monster.
When Dain the Caswallawn went on his quest to find a Cave of Trials from the Patrian era, the only one he could locate was in Balseraph lands. It was is a rural area far from any important Balseraph city, but it still might lend support to the idea that Patria was centered in the lands now ruled by Perpentach. I don't have proof of this, but I personally like to think that the Palus (or Tower of Eyes) is the last remaining tower of the palace from which Kylorin ruled his Patrian Empire. It might even be the very tower from which he tried to throw himself to commit suicide before Ceridwen stopped him and offered her dark pact. By the time it became Perpentach's prison we know that it was a lonely ruin deep in a wasteland far from human civilization. Perhaps it was just a lookout tower built to keep watch over a wilderness in the first place, but I prefer to think that the wasteland surrounding it was the unnatural result of far too much magic destroying what used to be the very heart of human civilization.
).
Speaking of which, do you have any idea if Kael is still working on/planning to publish Ashes of Brigdarrow?